blink-182 returns with a sonically rich step forward

Ben Wener - Knight Ridder/Tribune

It's halfway through blink-182's daylong media gambit, the first
big push for its progressive, self-titled sixth album, which hit
stores Nov. 25 -- and the constant onslaught of repetitive Q-and-A
sessions is enough to drive anyone mad. Already bassist Mark Hoppus
has endured, by his count, a dozen radio interviews and three
15-minute chats with print journalists.

He should be flipping out any moment.

"Nah, this is just the beginning of the process," he said
congenially. "It's still pretty new and cool. Maybe tomorrow I'll
be snapping."

At the time of our phone conversation a month ago, your humble
scribe was at a disadvantage: Fears of piracy heightening daily, no
music was available to hear, save for blink's latest single,
"Feeling This." It's a multilayered aural creation with a heavenly
harmonized ending that, it turns out, is indicative of the entire
album only inasmuch as it made maximum use of the band's new home
studio in its native San Diego.

About that, Hoppus loves to yap. He speaks excitedly about the
sheer amount of equipment blink employed: 70 guitars, 30 amps, "I
think Travis (Barker) had five or six different drum kits. At one
point he had 30 or 40 different snare drums alone. There were
pianos, keyboards, turntables -- all kinds of stuff. It was just
one big musical laboratory."

The result, I later discover, is that the 14-track "blink-182"
takes a significant sonic leap beyond the pop-punk that the group
stretched as far as it could go on its last two mega-sellers,
"Enema of the State" and "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket."

Certainly the band hasn't forsaken the most integral elements of
its approach: There are still plenty of speedy rhythms, thrashy
power chords and snotty attitude, though there is far less of the
halting singing that Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge made a blink
hallmark via smashes like "All the Small Things" and "Dammit."

But the expansive, downcast, sometimes spectral sound is merely
a reflection of an album lyrically consumed with sorrow and
uncertainty about the world, concerns that the final refrain from
"Feeling This" ("so lost and disillusioned") only briefly
suggests.

Gone is the juvenile lusting after "the girl at the rock show,"
here replaced by Hoppus indulging in romantic anguish (the
deep-blue "I Miss You," bolstered by a bed of swelling synths) and
DeLonge topping it with the disc-closing "I'm Lost Without You," in
which he wails "Are you afraid of being alone?" over an anthemic
tune not far removed from, say, the melancholy of Death Cab for
Cutie.

The King of Gloom himself, Robert Smith, even shows up for a
very Cure-like cut, the despairing "All of This," in which he
laments "another night with her, but I'm always wanting you."

Glaringly absent, too, is the trio's typical foul-mouthed humor
and horniness, perhaps best signified by a switch in album titles.
They once planned to mock Guns N' Roses' double-album bonanza of
the early '90s by calling the new collection "Use Your Erection I
and II."

Instead of chipper tunes about teenage angst and pranks, now
there are several pieces equating broken hearts with global
violence ("How do we fix this if we never have vision?" asks
"Obvious") and which angrily wonder if such disgruntled souls can
cope with a crumbling worldview.

"I'm sick with apprehension," DeLonge sings. "I'm crippled from
exhaustion, and I dread the moment when you finally come to kill
me." Elsewhere, on "Asthenia," he assumes a Major Tom-like role,
floating in space, pondering whether he really wants to return to
an Earth that "is in a really weird state right now," Hoppus
explained.

Not exactly lightweight fare. Overall, it's a considerably
darker blink than anyone could possibly imagine -- than clearly I
could have imagined while talking with Hoppus after having only
read the album's lyrics.

"For me," he said, "the lyrics on this record are a lot more
personal than anything I've ever written before."

"They seem that way," I told him.

"They do?"

He seemed genuinely surprised.

"Yeah. There's a nakedness to them that you've never shown
before."

"Well, I think that our lyrics before were about things that
happened a long time ago -- like, 'Hey, remember that awful feeling
in high school?' I think we've dealt with all of that as much as we
can now, and this time we didn't want to have that safety net to
fall back on. For me, I wanted to write about exactly what's going
on in my head right now."

Which is?

"Well, I've been thinking a lot about communication -- how
people really don't communicate with one another. People try, but
-- and I include myself in this -- I think people don't listen.
People more or less just wait to talk. And even then, words get in
the way and intent gets lost."

Evidence of this interest can be found in both the fear and
loathing of "Stockholm Syndrome" ("I wish I could explain myself
but words escape me") and, more obviously, "Here's Your Letter," in
which Hoppus declares, "I need more time to fix this problem."

"But more than that," he said, "I've just felt this paranoia
about the world. I think in general people are really taking a step
back these days and thinking about the state of things and what
they can do to make it better. People are a little more
introspective now, and maybe a little too narrow. Yeah, the world
has gotten so big and there's so much going on and so much
information to take in today, but at the same time people's world
views have gotten smaller."

Anyone needing an example of how post-Sept. 11 America is a
divided place to live in now has an ideal one: You know something
isn't quite right when the three endearing clowns of blink-182 turn
serious.

Yet what led them to this point?

"I think it has something to do with the routine we had been
in," Hoppus said. "At the end of the last tour, we had been working
so long and hard -- from album to tour to album to tour -- that
everyone was really ready for a break. There weren't internal
problems in the band. We all just needed to take a step back for a
while."

During that time, both Hoppus, 31, and DeLonge, 27, became
fathers, while DeLonge and Barker, 28, embarked on side projects --
DeLonge and Barker formed Box Car Racer, and Barker found time to
play with Rancid's Tim Armstrong in the Transplants.

Once they regrouped, "everything felt fresh and new, and we just
went in with the attitude that if we think something sounds cool
and means something to us, then we're gonna do it. We're not gonna
second-guess ourselves and worry about expectations -- and say
things like, 'Well, if we did it this way, then maybe more people
will like it.'

"You can't do that. It makes for bad songs. You can't control
how people will react to your music. Who knows if people will like
this new direction, or if this will sell as well as our other
albums?

"But from the inside of the band I don't know, it just feels
like a whole new world."

He starts laughing, realizing he inadvertently made a funny.
Maybe the old blink isn't gone after all.